Connect the Dots
by annj
Summary: What to do with all the scars? Blood and cussing... my favourites. Limp!Sam and Angst!Dean... also my favourites. Non-Slash.


**Connect the Dots**

**by Anja**

Rating: PG-13  
Wordcount: 1600  
Warnings: Blood and cussing... my favourites. Limp!Sam and Angst!Dean... also my favourites  
Spoiler: AHBL2  
Disclaimers: Nothings mine. Oh how I hate these words.  
A/N: My first Supernatural fic. Please be nice but honest. English's not my first language. I hope you get it anyway.  
Betad by leeloo3. Remaining mistakes are all mine.

Summary: What to do with all the scars?

* * *

The street in front of him was slick and muddy with todays angry rain. Autumn leaves made the asphalt a dangerous peril and Dean gripped the wheel even harder.

„You okay?", he asked for the tenth time within the last few minutes, daring to take a look at his grimacing brother who occupied the passenger seat.

„Peachy," the young man said, moaned and pressed his hand harder against the back of his bleeding shoulder. "Since when do leprechauns have guns?" he mumbled and Dean took one more look at the injured boy.

"You hit you head?"

Painfilled eyes turned towards him but their suffering didn't prevent Sam from answering.

"Bitch!"

Dean didn't have the heart to reply with the usual _jerk_but kept his eyes on the street instead.

"That was no leprechaun, Sammy. It was a stupid sprite with a gun."

"That's the same." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

"You really okay?"

"Just peachy."

"That's what you said before."

"Well that's because nothing changed, Dean."

They were quiet for a moment and Dean slowed down in a wide curve, accelerating when they were back on the straight road going as fast as he dared with the slippery ground. He could the hear the slight hitches in his brothers breathing. Ironic how he always gave away his pain by otherwise not showing any signs of unease at all.

"You..." He stopped himself, not wanting to ask the same question again and swallowed the words down like a bitter pill that would make his brother better. "... you're bleeding on my seat."

Sams head whipped around and he rose his right eyebrow. "So what? You want me to walk?"

"Well..."

"You're kidding."

Barely resisting the urge to bite his own thumb Dean pressed a strained laugh. Five minutes later he brought the impala to a halt in front of their motel.

_'Handicapped parking my ass'_

Luckily Sam was way to busy keeping the warm fluid in his body to realize this little fact. Otherwise he probably would have made Dean drive back at least half a block to get an appropriate one. It cost him three seconds to round the car and grab his brothers arm. Sam struggled, clearly not in the mood to be walked around like a blind-folded five year old who wasn't supposed to get a glimpse at the christmas presents under the decorated tree.

"I'm fine", he growled. His blood smeared hand gripped the edge of the door and Dean winced inwardly. One more piece of impala to scrub clean tomorrow.

"Yeah sure and I'm Goofy."

"How can I possibly object," Sam grinned and it turned into a hissing sound, when his knees buckled beneath him.

"Sam, would you please just this once forget your stupid pride and let me help. I have no intention of scraping your sorry ass from that parking lot!"

Wrapping on arm around his brothers waist he carefully steered the now unresisting man (though Dean could hear his halfhearted objections along the way) up the steps and along the narrow corridor leading towards their room.

And the evening had started so promising.

Since Cold Oak they had tried to come to terms with each other, with the rest of the world and with Deans heroic (Sam had called it egoistic) decision. And now time seemed to be ticking double speed. The first job after that was bad. The second one not even remotely professional and now, the third one, as everyone could see, turned out to be quite a catastrophe.

A sprite with a fucking gun? Who was responsible for this cosmic joke of preposterousness?

"'t was a leprechaun," Sam observed with a totally unnerving giggle and Dean scrunched his forehead in confusion trying to remember, if he had thought aloud.

"Shut up, Sammy."

"Hey, I'm the one with the hole in my back... again. Be nice!"

"It's not my fault you decided to play target for the dwarf." Dean fumbled a few seconds with the keys until he finally found the slit to put them in. The door opened with a squeaking noise that woke up at least every neighbour in a radius of 50 yards. As if on cue, the curtains of next rooms window began wiggling and the haunted face of an old man showed behind the dirty glass. Dean ignored him after a sloppy and not very apologizing grin. Sam didn't even realize their audience.

Sam's feet where tripping over the threshold and Dean had to tighten his grip around his brothers jacket.

"I didn't... pf," Sam began but was interrupted, when Dean let him sink stomach first onto the bed.

"Stay put and let me get the kit."

_'Yeah, as if Sam can get up and go anywhere.'_

Dean vanished into the bathroom. The light was bright and unforgiving in its attempt to reveal Deans tired features. His eyes sunken in from the wearisome effort of sleeping through the nights of the last weeks. The sound of Sam's breathing accompanied him in the wee hours until the first light of dawn kissed the world outside and his fatigue finally won. Mostly he didn't get more than two or three hours a night which was just fine with him as long as Sam was there to tease him about it. How Sam managed to make it through the night without even moving once was a riddle Dean wasn't sure he wanted to solve. Not a single vision, not even a naked-in-class nightmare and somehow insomnia had come along Deans ever present restlessness. But Sam seemed cured, that should count something, right?

He splashed his face with cold water, rubbing away the last traces of blood on his hands and wet a towel. Grabbing the First Aid Kit he went back in the the hotelroom to find his brother exactly where he left him.

"Sammy?"

"Hrrrmmff... Sam!" came the muffled reply but otherwise Sam showed no signs of awareness.

"Sam, let me take care of your shoulder, 'kay?" Dean urged and started peeling away the jacket and the number of t-shirt layers clinging to his brothers upper body.

"Cold, Dean," Sam complained when the last shredded remains of his clothes were gone.

"I know Sammy. Come on, take these." He lay two pills in Sam hand and offered a glass of water but the pills were faster gone than Dean was finished with the question. "I take that as a no."

"Could we please just get over with it?" Sam grumbled, his eyes shut and teeth clenched together in a death grip that would make even death look feeble.

"Okay Rambo, you want ... " (_... to bleed to death on my bed...) _"... to do the stitching on you own?"

Sam didn't reply. Either he was out cold or sulking. Neither was on Deans "favourite Sam's current condition"-list.

"Fine", he sighed and wiped a thumb across his brothers eyebrow. If Sam had been awake an awkward sensation would have crept across his spine, a feeling of foreboding or... afterboding? It had started a few days after Cold Oak. A dull pain, an anxiety, a sentiment of not knowing. The nightmares had followed him into his dreams, showing him his brother, eyes black as coal.

Though his brothers eyes were shut now, so no hint of black. Even if they had been open.

His hand shook slightly when he launched to stick the heated needle in his brothers skin which was red and swollen next to a blackened hole, where the bullet had entered his brothers shoulder. Luckily it had come out straight on the front. The blood wasn't spurting anymore. It had dried, nearly black against his brothers skin. But that was okay. As long as his brother would be fine, he would be fine.

Six stitches were needed. Not much in comparison with numerous other injuries his brother had to suffer in their job.

Stupid job!

With the towel he removed the blood, back and front, and Sam shifted but didn't wake up. He removed his shoes, got the blanket from the other bed and was about to spread it over him, when his eyes fell once more onto the bare back of his brother. There was a scar, big and unshaped right in the middle. A memory unwanted. A few long scars beneath, just over the waistband of his jeans. Not long and Sams future ladies would be able to play connect the dots on his back. Drawing pictures of bunnys and mundane single-family house and buttercup bouquets. Maybe... maybe one day.

He had stared. It was late and his brother was sleeping. Tomorrow everything would be fine. At least better than today. It had to be.

He thought about going to bed but Sam occupied the one near the door. No way he would be able to sleep in the other one. With a tired sigh he sat on the floor, his back against the first bed and his head back on the Covers. Only for few minutes he closed his eyes, listening to the breathing of the person behind him and a calm serenity washed over him. Maybe it was the decrease of adrenalin pumping through his veins or maybe his body just shut down after weeks of inner turmoil but he fell asleep in an instant.

And for the first time he would see the sunrise from the other side of sleep.


End file.
